Water Source

The City of Sartell's goal is to provide high quality, safe, reliable drinking water that surpasses every state and federal requirement.

Sartell is fortunate to have a clean drinking water source: a buried glacial drift aquifer. The aquifer is an underground supply of groundwater, with water filling the pore spaces between grains of sand and gravel. The glaciers that passed through the Sartell area thousands of years ago deposited these layers of sand and gravel, which have since become covered by other geologic deposits. Groundwater flows through the pore spaces and is pumped into Sartell’s wells, which range between 92-154 feet in depth. It takes several years for water at the land surface to infiltrate down to the aquifer. During that period, organisms that might have caused diseases have died and have been filtered out by the layers of soil and sediment.

When water infiltrates from the land surface down to the buried glacial drift aquifer, it may dissolve minerals in the soils and geologic deposits. These dissolved minerals are the major contributor to the hardness in Sartell's water. Hardness is the measure of dissolved minerals that are in the water. We have about 18-21 grains of hardness, which can be lowered by consumers, if desired, using a private water-softening system.

Though we have very good source water, we do take additional steps to comply with the Minnesota Department of Health rules. We add Fluoride to the water to allow bodies to build stronger bones and teeth. We also add Chlorine which is a very strong disinfectant and assures that no harmful bacteria or organisms can grow in the system. It also protects the water if any contaminants were to find their way in to our water.

We have very precise equipment to add these items and we also test the water daily to assure we have the right amounts of Chlorine and Fluoride throughout the water system.

The state requires cities to have 1.2 milligrams of Fluoride per liter of water and have a detectable Chlorine residual at the farthest points in the system.